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A Psychologist at Aberdeen University claims to have discovered what women really want in order to be seduced.
If the reports are to be believed, then it seems that this formula does away with all the traditional advice, such as chat-up lines, wealth, good looks and a sense of humour etc. Because his research indicates that a man can significantly increase his pulling power by simply catching a woman’s eye and lightly touching her on the arm.
The study by Aberdeen University’s Dr Ben Jones found that two-thirds of women agreed to dance with a man who rested his hand on her arm for a second or two whilst making the request. However, when the man kept his hands by his side as he asked the same question, his success rate fell by half.
Additionally, women were also more likely to give their phone-number to a man who touched their arm as he approached them in the street.
The study, published in Focus Magazine, suggested that touching makes a man appear dominant, and therefore more attractive to the opposite sex.
Dr Jones claimed that making eye contact also signals interest in a woman, but only if it is genuine:
Smiling can make you more attractive but it is worth bearing in mind that faking a smile is quite tricky
He added:
Men who find it hard to fake a smile could try taking better care of their skin, or surrounding themselves with other women to appear more appealing
At this point, regular readers will no doubt be eager to point out that Focus Magazine isn’t exactly a proper peer-reviewed scientific journal. However, Seduction Labs aims to bring together newer pick-up, dating and relationship related information from a wide variety of sources.
Other points that the reports are somewhat sketchy on were:
- Which area(s) of the woman’s arm did the experimenters touch?
- Why the arm? Why not some other [non-intimate] area of her body?
- Were any specific sections of the woman’s arm more efficacious than others?
- To my mind, touching seems natural, whilst someone keeping their arms straight down by sides seems stilted and unnatural; was this effect controlled for?
- Were other positions aside from ‘touching’ and ‘arms by sides’ tried? (Arms folded or arms behind the back, for example?)
- Were women significantly more likely to give their phone-number to a man who touched their arm as he approached them in the street? (Having a stranger walk up and demand a phone-number doesn’t seem like an especially effective pick-up strategy to me…)
- What percentage of the numbers obtained in the street were fakes?
- How did this compare with women prepared to dance (or otherwise)?
- After touching then dancing, were the women more likely to give their phone-number / go on a date / etc. compared with women who danced but wern’t touched first?
- Do all women really want to be dominated? I’ve seen enough spam to suggest that it’s more likely men who want a dominatrix.
- How do we differentiate between “fake eye-contact” and “genuine eye-contact”?
- Finally, the smiling advice also seems counter to the pimp wisdom of Iceberg Slim, and contemporary research.
If I’ve missed anything, or if you have the answers, please do comment or email.
Oliver writes.
What I find dubious about the Focus Magazine article’s claims was the suggestion that touching makes a man appear dominant. I remember an old girlfriend of mine who, on meeting me face to face for the first time (in our college library), held my arm as she introduced me to herself. She’d clearly remembered who I was, but I hadn’t recalled meeting her before, so this physical gesture came a bit out of the blue for me. She wasn’t a dominant person, not in behaviour and definitely not in appearance, being diminutive, smiley, and always wearing flowery dresses.
The surprise physical contact romanticized the whole interaction in way that wouldn’t have happened if she’d not made the gesture. Perhaps this was because she had obviously already dropped any shield that she might instinctively hold up to a strange man – so half my work was done. Or more probably because the gesture was one that I had only recently experienced from my previous sexual partner… positive associations.
You can try to break the gesture down and rationalise it as a form of dominance, or a demonstration of bravery… or whatever. But it seems to me that to say this is to try to over-sexualise it. Touching in the right kind of way is simply a demonstration of warmth. Just because adults hold children in such a way to give them a feeling of security doesn’t mean that it is actually a show of strength or power.
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Posted by Jonathan in Psychology, Sociology